Tales and fleeting memories of my liver journey unabashed

Mulishness & Surprise Spreadsheets

I apologize for the gap in posts, I’ve been sick (at home, not the hospital), had Captain Man-Bun break his arm, had a little visitor for a week who answers to Charli, and then was sick again this last weekend. Fortunately, I’m feeling human again just in time for my one year labs/scans for my liver anniversary!

I was cleaning up files on my computer this morning and I came across a rogue excel sheet. Anyone who knows me well knows I love to make lists, especially if they are color coded and on a spreadsheet. Don’t judge me. But I found a list of questions I made for my doctor at UTMB late last August during the week and a half I was discharged. (To recap…I got sick late August, started looking yellow and was in the hospital at UTMB for a week and a half, then they discharged me. Then they had me follow up in 2 weeks and was readmitted then for the long haul). So this list was me at home…swollen with edema, bright yellow with jaundice, weeks from death (to be blunt) trying to make sense of my condition. Trying to figure out how I could fix it with questions and still very very concerned with convincing myself, along with everyone else, that I was healthy, had no problems and could continue with my school work. Because as we all know, if you can convince everyone else there is no problem then the problem doesn’t exist right? Yea, nope. Hard nope. As I’ve said before I was raised my stubbornness was a good quality and would motivate me in life to succeed, but I let it get the better of me and has become one of my absolute worst qualities. I’ve let stubbornness almost kill me and kill relationships romantic, platonic, and familial. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, don’t be me.

Also, as a side note and as a more weathered hospital patient. This list shows me how naïve and how much I just didn’t pay attention to anything the doctors and nurses told me the first stay in August. I knew nothing of what was going on in my body, didn’t care, didn’t listen. I just wanted to convince everyone I was ok, and wanted to know how I could spin my condition into something that didn’t verbally sound serious.

So here’s the list I found…

Questions for Doctor:

What is my official diagnosis?

Is brown pee still normal until the swelling and all the excess liver bile leaves my system?

Are the spots on my back the same as what was on my arms and face in the ER – bile leaving my system?

Am I safe to return to my normal school duties (describe school duties)

if the edema is from alcoholic liver disease that is normal and will go away with time correct?

if the edema is not from my liver but from sitting that will go away with time and movement correct?

note: the edema is painful, if I sit without my legs up too long they swell up to sausages

is there anything I can do to help the edema go down faster?

I need a note for my chair and dr. nichols regarding returning to school duties and vaguely describing my hospital stay/length and problem

note: I don’t want the official diagnosis or mention of alcohol in it per my hippa rights and my chair said I did not have to disclose anything I wasn’t comfortable with

they just need something to get an understanding of what went wrong, what is being done to fix it and if I can be cleared for school work

trying to avoid a forced medical leave of absence next semester

what is going on with my spleen – why is it swollen, how does it de-swell, how long will that take?